A Secret of Successful People I Met
What do successful people have in common?
I’ve been always curious about what makes people successful. I understand that everyone has their own definition of success. In my case, success is a qualitative and quantitative measure of achievement in an area where a target or a goal is set for you by yourself or others. The definition of “success” from Dictionary.com is
Success is the favorable or prosperous termination of attempts or endeavors; the accomplishment of one’s goals.
To fulfill my curiosity, I seek to meet these established people and ask them questions as much as possible. One upside of being a graduate student is that you get to meet a lot of successful and interesting people, as you get to travel more for academic purposes (also typically people are more interested in talking to grad students than undergrad students). For the past months after joining the University of Waterloo as a MASc student, I had many opportunities to meet and talk to these successful people. To list a few:
- CEOs & Founders of oil and gas companies and organizations (varying in scale)
- A professor directly & indirectly running six companies while traveling the world giving speeches
- Indigenous chiefs who survived through the residential school and leading multiple indigenous communities
- Serial tech entrepreneurs
- World Muay Thai and Boxing Champions
- A founder & CEO of a solar energy company with 100+ employees
- A founder & CEO of a geothermal energy company
Their life stories are all unique and different from each other. However, one thing I observed is that they are all true self-motivators. This means that even though they went through unimaginably difficult times, they were able to stand up again and keep moving forward. They were able to do this and achieve what they want because they had
REASON
For example, one of the indigenous chiefs (Dr. Reg Crowshoe) I met was put into a residential school and went through hardships until he was freed. For instance, he was beaten for using his language and living by his culture. He was bullied by the teachers without knowing the reason. These left a huge scar to him and his mates at the time. After the residential schools were closed, his friends and he were freed and returned to their lands. However, his friends passed away much earlier than they had to, because of drug, illness, and suicide, because of the trauma from the residential school. But the reason that kept the chief going was that he wanted to preserve and protect the indigenous culture and the system that taught him all the wisdom he now has. He currently leads multiple indigenous communities, represents Canada in many international occasions and gives speeches all around the world.
Another example, the CEO of the solar company told me this. If you want to succeed in life, you should do what you good at and what you like. Since he immigrated to Canada a few decades ago, he was an advocate of renewable energy, especially solar power. He told me he tried everything to put food on the table like restaurants, construction laborer, etc. However, he told me these times were nothing but misery. He was mentally and physically deteriorated, and his financial situation didn’t improve. When he finally decided to go back to realize his vision to spread the solar panel usages, he was able to fully commit and dedicate his life. Now he is the owner of a company with approximately 100 employees promoting renewable energy in Canada
One last example. When I went to a Muay Thai Kickboxing gym in Bangkok in 2017, I was able to train under a champion named Attachai Fairtex. After one of the training sessions, I asked him how and why did you start training Muay Thai. His answer was quite surprising as he told me he initially hated Muay Thai. He had to become a fighter because he had to provide his family. So he started his fighting career since he was a child. As he became better, he had an opportunity to go to other countries. To him, that was a shocking moment. At the time, Thailand was not a very wealthy country, but the countries he went such as the USA were wealthy and prospering. Then a vision came to his mind. He wanted to promote his country and wanted to contribute to his country. After he set his vision, he was not only fighting for his family. He was fighting for something bigger. He was an active fighter until 2011. He is now holding an insane fight record of 180 wins, 15 losses, and five draws. He is a three-time Muay Thai World Champion.
As I mentioned in one of the articles I wrote, I met a lot of depressed people in graduate school as well. They often blame the school or their supervisor for their depression. So I ask them why did you come to grad school? And their answer is often I did not know what else to do. And then I ask them again, what are you going do after you are done? And their answer is usually I don’t know what to do or whatever it takes me. In my opinion, their depression is nothing to do with their school or their supervisor. I think it is because they worked too hard for too long without knowing the reason “why.”
So you may ask, what is your reason, Wayne? What keeps you going? I wanted to have a good answer to this question. So I thought about it for a long time and shortened my answer in one sentence as follow:
I want Canadian energy resources to be utilized efficiently and sustainably, and allocated appropriately so that everyone in the world has fair access to them when they need them.
I hope you can have a moment and think about your reason. You probably have your own definition of success too. What does success mean to you? The fact that you are on LinkedIn and reading my article already shows you that you have some ambition boiling deep inside you. So don’t worry about the obstacles for now and be confident.
So let me ask you again.
What is your reason?
BONUS Motivational Video from the real Wolf of Wall Street (Jordan Belfort):
Image sources (in order):
https://addicted2success.com/motivation/the-motivation-behind-5-of-the-most-successful-people-ever/
